Monday, 20 November 2017

Undampened Spirits

Whose brilliant idea was it to bring Midge home during the worst weather months of the year? Oh yeah, mine!

Saturday...

And Sunday...

What's annoying is this happened last weekend, too. Also, our cat finds this weather far too exciting and keeps us up all night while he runs around trying to watch the rain drops and blowing debris he can see thru the windows. I'm hopeful this means that if something weird happens like a break in or house fire he'll wake us up then too, but...cats...I don't know, he could just enjoy torturing us.

Still, we made it out for our Friday night ride in the indoor and had a good ride. Saturday, I opted to combine fitness and jumping with the following:

It sounds impressive when I say she was so into it she was jumping the standards, but these particular ones are abnormally short!

While my goals of setting up some legit courses with spooky things and XC type elements are still a fail, but at least since the arena is huge we were able to gallop around at XC pace and loop around to pop over these at a reasonable speed off alternating reins. Midge was super into it, and super honest about the barrels too. She was huffing and puffing by the time we called it a day, so that's a win for pony fitness improving.

I need for the weather to cooperate slightly one of these weekends so that I can get a proper course set up. The other trick with sharing this particular arena is that you can't leave things set up when you're not using them, so I basically need to have a lot of free time or a helper to help set up and take things down. Bridget is very patient, but unfortunately lacks opposable thumbs to really help me out :)

Even with the weather, daylight, and boarding amenities challenges, I'm loving being back home and still obsessively scheming about ways to make it permanent.

I'm loving these little dollar store reflective bands. They work really well on my stirrups on these dark days and don't get in the way at all. I need a pic of the whole ensemble, Midge has a red LED bike light for her tail and everything! Looking at this, I am also reminded that I need to just give up the pretense of adult length stirrup leathers already, lol

Due to technical difficulties, no lesson this week on Audrey, although I was asked if I'd mind taking her out Tuesday for some exercise since my coach can't ride that day. Of course! I love riding Ms Audrey, but honestly I think it might be good for me to ride without me worrying about my coach who is also her owner/rider watching me. I do worry I will mess her lovely mare up and put extra pressure on myself because even though I know she wouldn't put me on her if she didn't think it was a good match, the negative voice in my head worries she'll see how bad I am and take away the offer to ride! (For the record, I do know she'd never do that...as long as I try and I show up and want to learn she'll help me!)

What a clever idea about the reflectors on stirrups! I spend a lot of time these days hacking down a very dark road from Charlie's barn to the riding arenas and it makes me a little nervous. I bought some hi vis tape with the idea of DIY-ing some stuff but haven't been sure what to make yet.

yikes on your weather, yay on your riding and reflective stuff. And HA on your cat. That is funny (My cat runs window to window if there is a CAT in our yard because he honestly thinks he is a dog from being raised with dogs. HA